Generally, a “machinery control system” is a system having the primary function of controlling one or more machines, such as in an industrial plant, and which may monitor some machine performance parameters in the process of performing its primary function. A “machinery monitoring system” is a system having the primary function of measuring and monitoring performance parameters of one or more machines, and which may perform some machinery control operations in the process of performing its primary function. Examples of machine performance include the following: machine reliability, operator safety, machine protection, machine status, and machine condition.
One example of a machinery control system is the DeltaV™ distributed control system offered by Emerson Process Management. The DeltaV™ system uses computer hardware as user interfaces which are connected by a digital data link to controllers and I/O modules distributed throughout a process plant or factory to control industrial processes.
One example of a machinery monitoring system is the CSI 6500 series of machine health monitors offered by CSI Technologies, Inc. These include various types of machine parameter sensors, such as for sensing vibration, displacement, temperature, and pressure. These sensors are connected to communication modules which are connected to a communication bus. Computers connected to the communication bus monitor the output of the various sensors and, based on the sensor signals, determine whether the machines are operating within acceptable limits or whether a fault condition is indicated. Such systems are often used for protection shutdown and predictive analysis.
Integrating a machinery monitoring system with a control system typically requires tedious setup of communication links for each measured machine parameter value generated by the machinery monitoring system. For example, in the control system, a data input device must be configured to specify the communication protocol, address the appropriate data registers, define data tag names, specify the data format types, perform appropriate scaling, assign data units, define alarm limits, and specify alarm priorities. This configuration process, which in the past has been performed manually, introduces human error and inconsistencies that can render the performance of the control system and the machinery monitoring system less than adequate.
What is needed, therefore, is a means to automatically configure a control system to provide seamless integration between the control system and a machinery monitoring system.